The Met Gala is one of the biggest fashion happenings each year. One of the best parts of this yearly launch party of the exhibition, held at the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute, is its changing theme each year. This year’s theme is bound to bring out some creative ideas. So what is it?
The May 2020 Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s theme will be “About Time: Fashion and Duration,” which will be on display beginning May 7th, 2020 and will run through September 7th, 2020. The Met Gala will take place May 4th, 2020 and will surely have some interesting costumes and outfits to be seen.
2020 also sees the museum’s 150 year anniversary, and so the exhibit will celebrate this fact by exploring the century and a half’s fashion trends, starting from 1870 and up until present day. The concept was partially inspire by the idea of “la duree,” which refers to the concept of time that accumulates and is not divisible, an idea by philosopher Henri Bergson.
The gala will feature a “ghost narration” by Virginia Woolf, transposed through Michael Cunningham, who wrote The Hours, a novel inspired by Woolf’s life and works. Vogue magazine also makes note of the fact that Andrew Bolton, who is the Wendy Yu Creator in Charge of the Costume Institute, was inspired by the 1992 film Orlando, a movie based on the Virginia Woolf novel.
He shares: “There’s a wonderful scene in which Tilda Swinton enters the maze in an 18th-century woman’s robe à la Francaise, and as she runs through it, her clothes change to mid-19th-century dress, and she reemerges in 1850s England. That’s where the original idea came from. What I like about Woolf’s version of time is the idea of a continuum. There’s no beginning, middle, or end. It’s one big fat middle. I always felt the same about fashion. Fashion is the present.”
The Met Gala will be hosted by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Emma Stone, Meryl Streep, Nicolas Ghesquiere, and Anna Wintour, of course.
Let’s see what wonderful and creative outfits will come out of this year’s gala!